European Council

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

In the last quarter the British economy grew by 1%, the fastest growth of any major country in the European Union. Clearly, though, right across Europe there are immense growth challenges. The eurozone is back in recession. What we see with the British economy, despite all the difficulties, is that there are over 1 million extra people in private sector jobs compared with when we came into office.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

A few weeks ago I held a conference with my local small and medium-sized enterprises, along with UK Trade & Investment, focusing on increasing exports. Will my right hon. Friend say a little more on how he has been able to protect small and medium-sized enterprises from unnecessary and burdensome European regulation?

[The Prime Minister]

What we have managed to do is get the European Commission not only to instruct—it is quite fond of doing this—other European countries to look at deregulation, but to look at its own rules and regulations. I think that it is quite striking that the communiqué, the Council conclusions, actually uses the word “scrap” in relation to some European regulations, particularly those that are no longer of use. The Europe Minister, who is sitting next to me, is gesticulating because he knows that getting the bureaucrats in Brussels to use a word like “scrap” is an achievement.